The story everybody is talking about is Mark Mcwire FINALLY coming out and admitting his steroid use. Ok, well maybe not everybody is talking about it. Wait, it was all over the news yesterday and today. People were talking about it at work. Hell, even Ron Reagan was talking about it as well. So upon further review, yes, everybody is talking about it.

There is really not much more I could add to it that hasn’t already been said or that I haven’t posted about previously in any of my other posts about baseball’s steroid cheats. As for McGwire, I thought most of what he said was a load of shit. At first I thought his emotions and apology were heartfelt and sincere, but while listening to the radio today I was made aware that before his one day media blitz, he hired a PR company that is run by former Bush mouthpiece Ari Fleischer. Nothing personal against Fleischer, but you have got to be damn fucking good to be the press secretary for any politician, especially the president. Now I’m never one to believe everything I see or hear, so I did some fact checking on this and you can see for yourself on this website:

http://www.fleischersports.com/

Now there is nothing on the website to confirm that McGwire hired them, but honestly, I think its as obvious as McGwire’s steroid use. The guy I was listening to on the radio said they more than likely not only coached him on what to say but also when to cry. This fucker fooled us for year when he was hitting all those homers, don’t let him fool you again.

Baseball is my first love, my passion and my favorite sport. Its also a scam. Don’t believe anybody who claims that the game is now clean. Maybe I’m just a cynical asshole, but it is as tainted as ever.

I try to avoid writing about work because, honestly, does anybody really want to hear about my day at work? Also I deal with work for 9 hours a day, the last thing I want to do is write about it so that I have to relive work again. But something happened today that I just had to write about. I only wish that somebody had caught it on video so that it could have been You Tubed. Then again in this day and age, perhaps it was caught on video and already on You Tube. And in all honesty, in retrospect I probably should have been embarrassed, but hell if it were me watching the whole thing unfold, I would have found it funny too. Then again, I actually did find it funny.

See, I went to lunch in our lunchroom and saw a lady drinking that Pepsi Throwback, the Pepsi made with sugar as opposed to corn syrup. I’ve never tried the Throwback, so I decided to buy one. A bottle of pop (we here in the midwest call it pop……………deal with it!) in our vending machine costs $1.50. We have one of those state of the art, modern vending machines that has the arm that pulls the bottle out and puts it in some sort of lift thingy and it comes on the side of the vending machine. So I put in my money and made my selection and watched the cool little arm go to the Pepsi and grab the Pepsi. Only this arm seemed to hang onto things about as good as Packers QB Aaron Rodgers hangs on to footballs in overtime. Somehow, it picked up the bottle and knocked it into a bottle of Coke, knocking the Coke to the floor of the vending machine. As for the Pepsi, the arm returned to its normal position with the Pepsi laying slanted across the damn arm. At first I started yelling at the vending machine. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but there probably was a curse word or two involved. Next, my instinct was to reach in there and try to get it, but keep in mind, there is no slot at the bottom to grab things. So then I started to move to try to shake the fucking machine but remembered that oh, right, it wouldn’t matter because the only way things get out is if the arm delivers it.

I thought maybe I would buy another Pepsi, but I only had a $10 and no change. I went downstairs and paid $1.79 for the Pepsi in a deli that is in our building. I rushed back upstairs and who do I run into as soon as I’m coming in from the stairs? The vending machine guy! I told him that I had a problem with him and that his machine was fucked up and stole my money. So he and I go to the lunchroom only to find another poor slob who put money into the machine only to have the same thing happen to him and now the Coke was joined on the bottom of the vending machine by a bottle of Mountain Dew. I’m not sure, but I think the Coke and Mountain Dew were fucking! It was right about then that I realized that I had forgotten to get my change from the $2 I put in the vending machine. Turns out, after he had the problem with his pop, the other poor slob went to get his change and used my fifty cents to buy himself a pop! Well fortunately the vending machine guy was there to refund me for the $1.50 I put into the machine, but I still lost 39 cents on the whole deal.

I should mention that the whole time I was arguing and fighting with the vending machine, everybody in the breakroom, which was probably 20-30 people were watching this whole thing unfold, shaking their heads and laughing. The rest of the day I kept on getting comments from people about the whole ordeal.

You might be wondering if I liked the Pepsi, it was good but probably not worth the trouble I went through. As for the Coke and Mountain Dew, well it turns out they got married. Word is, they are actually expecting, they made an appointment with Dr. Pepper just to confirm.

There is this little show that is my favorite show of all time, I don’t know if any of you have heard of it. Its on FOX and this month, it turns 20! The show is called The Simpsons, have any of you heard of it (in case you didn’t know, I was being sarcastic, although I’m sure you figured that out by now). I think the first episode aired around January 18 or 19 of the year 1990. That is a long damn time ago. Its unheard of for a prime time non news tv show to last 20 years and absolutely crazy that the show is a cartoon. And while clearly the show is well past its prime and should have ended 2 or 3 years ago, it is still very impressive that it made it 20 years. Just think, next year it will be old enough to drink. Hell, if Bart had aged properly throughout the show, he would be 30 fuckin years old now!

I’m nothing if not a massive Simpsons fan. Sure, I’ve got just about every season that has been released on DVD, but my obsession goes much further than that. I’ve got Simpsons toys, Simpsons games, Simpsons puzzles, Simpsons posters, Simpsons shirts, Simpsons boxers, Simpsons hats, Simpsons pajama pants, Simpsons magnets, Simpsons calendars, Simpsons comic books, Simpsons stickers, a dashboard Homer, the Simpsons Christmas train, a couple of talking Homer Santas, a Simpsons call tone, a Simpsons alarm clock, Simpsons cereal, hell, I’ve even got an actual x-ray of Homer Simpson’s head! Shit, I don’t even know if I mentioned everything that I have that is Simpsons related. Wait, I forgot a few things, I have Simpsons glasses and mugs. If that sounds like I’m sort of over crazed Simpsons fan, its because I am. But, much of the stuff I didn’t even buy for myself, in this case my reputation proceeds me; it seems like anytime I get a gift its a Simpsons gift.

Its hard to say what the show means to me.  It has influenced me greatly in terms of my sense of humor. And when I’m feeling down, I can always pop in a few episodes of the Simpsons to put me in a better mood. You may not be able to tell from the above, but I do realize that there are far more important things in life than the Simpsons. They just happen to be a great way to relieve stress as I’ve always been a firm believer that there is no better stress reliever than laughter. And that is the one thing the Simpsons can always deliver: laughter.

I was thinking about my first introduction to the Simpsons. They actually started as cartoon shorts on the Tracey Ullman show way back in 1987. The very first episode was a Christmas special in 1989 followed by the regular season premiere a month later. I didn’t actually start watching them right away. In fact, I had seen a picture of them in tv guide and thought they were some sort of cartoon about aliens who came to earth. I remember I was a freshman in high school in 1990 and somebody at school mentioned something called the Simpsons. I said I didn’t know who they were and asked if they were that funny lookin alien family that I had seen in tv guide. Ironically, I can’t even remember when I first started to watch them or what the first episode was, all I know is that eventually, I was hooked.

20 years though, that is a long fuckin time. Think about this for a second, there are kids who were born after the show debuted who are now big Simpsons fans themselves. For them, the Simpsons have always been around. And think about how much the world has changed since then. The Simpsons have outlasted the Bushes and the Clintons; hell they made it through 3 Bush presidencies. Oh, and speaking of the first George Bush, remember during the 1992 election he made a big stink about the Simpsons and how they did not promote family values? The ironic part is that nowadays they are tame compared to other shows like it (such as the great Family Guy and South Park) and some of the other shit that passes for tv these days.

I don’t know if the Simpsons is the greatest tv show of all time and I don’t believe it is the most influential show of all time. I do know that culturally, it may very well have had a bigger impact than any show in the history of tv. Honestly, how many people have not seen at least part of one episode? It is almost clearly without a doubt, the show for my generation (that would be Generation X). And its not just here in the states. Worldwide, it is a big hit. I remember in 1999 a friend of mine went study in Australia for a semester and I asked him what they thought of American entertainment. He said that they loved the Simpsons.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch the Simpsons.

Everyday for the last 9 years, I’ve known just exactly the day that the Baseball Hall of Fame voting is announced. When the day starts to get close, I start to mentally countdown the days with hope that my all time favorite athlete, Andre Dawson, might be elected to the Hall of Fame. This week I told people that I thought he would not make it this year, but thought there might be a chance. Maybe I just didn’t want to get my hopes up only to find out that he didn’t make it. Well, today I went to lunch and checked my email on my phone and saw the email I got from Cubs.com: Andre Dawson had been elected to the Hall of Fame!

I’ve never been the type that has had heroes or people I looked up to. I fell in love with baseball in 1985. A couple of years later, Dawson was a free agent and he wanted to play for my Cubs. I didn’t know a lot about him and didn’t really have an opinion on him, except that he was a pretty damn good player. Well in spring training of 1987, he showed up at the Cubs spring training site and made them an unprecedented and unheard of offer from any athlete in any sport. He gave them a blank contract and told them to name his salary. In an industry in which players demand to be paid certain amounts of money and players who whine to no ends about the money they make, this was a refreshing attitude. Of course, the Cubs signed him on the cheap, for only $500,000. To me and you, even now that is not exactly chump change, but even for that day, the amount was well under what a player of his caliber could have been making. So what did the Cubs get for their half a mil? How about the National League MVP!

I read an article on Yahoo Sports today that summed his election up perfectly. “If the Hall insists on penalizing certain players for character defects, then I have to insist that the opposite also be true. Dawson is going to be a great Hall of Famer and his example is a great one for future ballplayers.” Dawson was the epitome of class, heart, soul and humbleness. It wasn’t long into the 1987 season that I started to see all of that along with his many talents. Up until that point, I never had a true favorite player, but that all changed when he came around. For as long as I had seen him play, he had 2 gimpy knees that from what I’ve been told, he had to ice for an hour BEFORE and after games. His knees were so bad, that not only  has he had both replaced, but he also might need to have one of the prosthetic knees replaced.

Now I’m tempted with going to Cooperstown in upstate New York in July to see him get inducted. I’m going to price hotels and things like that when I’m done posting.

One thing I found funny is that Yahoo always lists the Web Pulse which pretty much tracks searches and what is hot on the net for the day. On today, the day he was elected Dawson was number 2, behind, get this, Bob fuckin Barker! Seriously, what the fuck? Nothing against Bob Barker, but why are people all of a sudden so interested in him, hell he hasn’t even hosted the Price is Right in how long?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. I really think I should become a stripper. I’ve stripped before, clearly I’ve got tons of stripping talent. And I do have an amazing, studly body, what with my 5’6 height and my 132lbs pure man meat. Honestly, its tough to beat my massive 10 inch arms and my 5 inch wrists. If that doesn’t scream out stripper, than I don’t know what does.

Of course the problem is that there is already a pretty big market for strippers, what with bachelorette parties and all. But, I would totally concentrate on the areas that normal strippers don’t even bother with, you know, like funerals and all. I mean what better way to liven up a wake or funeral than to have a stripper jump out of the casket. Just picture this, the casket is closed and all of a sudden at an appropriate time it pops open and stripper music comes on and out I pop, naked as the day the dearly departed was born.

Or better yet, how about at a retirement party. After all, they say you really don’t start living life to the fullest until after you retire. And why not start your retirement off with a bang? Hell, everybody knows the party doesn’t even get started until the stripper arrives.

Ohhhh, I know, how about job fairs? Everybody always seems so nervous and stiff at job fairs, this is a way to loosen everybody the fuck up. Plus, it pretty much guarantees that none of the applicants will be the least dressed!

I’m open to other ideas as well. The way I see it, this can be the start of a whole new business for me. I mean, I could have a whole team of strippers, stripping there way around town!

As you no doubt know from my December 14th post, I started reading a book called Don’t Know Much About History. I mentioned in that post that I was hoping to post at least once a week not only my progress in the book, but also what I was learning. So that was 3 weeks ago and I have yet to post about it again.Well, I have a damn good excuse, I spent the better part of the past 3 weeks hopped up on model airplane glue…………….oooooooo that’s good stuff!!! So anywho, you are probably wondering just how many pages I’ve made it in the book. In fact, I’m sure you have spent the better part of the past 3 weeks nervous with anticipation, not being able to sleep at night, maybe even finding yourself on or around the toilet panicked with how far I have gotten in the book. Well the good news is that I have an update for you! When I last posted, I was deep into the book, 10 pages. I am now 180 pages into the book! Ohhhh, that’s about 8 pages a day!! Wow, I’m burning through this book. With the book being 658 pages, if I stay on the same pace, I should be done with the book right about the time Albert Pujols is disgraced for using performance enhancing drugs! But I digress, here is what I’ve learned in those 170 pages:

• The American revolution was all a big misunderstanding due to the lack of a translator to translate the shit Ozzy Osbourne was mumbling. 
• George Washington removed his pants during the first presidential inaugural speech. He said his pants kept making his boxers ride up into his crack.
• Sally Hemings whipped Thomas Jefferson’s ass with a golf club when he accused her of having an affair with Tiger Woods.
• Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton just so that Dick Cheney wouldn’t be the only sitting vice president to shoot a man. 
• Andrew Jackson used to draw lipstick on his lips on the $20 bill.
• Ben Franklin invented the glory hole. He also discovered the G spot, but let John Adams take the credit because he felt sorry for him since Adams had spent his entire life searching for it. Just ask Abigail. 
• During the War of 1812, Dolly Madison pissed out a fire that the British had started in the Lincoln bedroom.

So there you have it so far, can’t you see just how much I’m learning. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have 8 pages to read!

Ok, so one last post about the decade that was. I was having a conversation recently with some friends about the top stories of the decade. One of my friends decided to put together a list of the top 10 stories of the past decade. The obvious (September 11th) was number one, but we were split on number two, we figured it had to be one of three stories, the 2000 election, Hurricane Katrina or the Obama election. All three were significant and changed the world.

Also, just look at the changes we saw in the decade. Its no big surprise that the internet now rules the world. Its also no surprise that cell phones have advanced to the point that they have advanced. I guess the big surprises would be the changes that didn’t happen. Some of the same problems that plagued us at the start of the decade still plague us. The environment has gotten worse instead of better. America is still as dependent on foreign oil as we were at the start of the century, however its not as bad as people would have us believe. Also our economy is nearly reliant on China, in spite of the revelation that they cover our products in lead. Oh, and the Cubs still have not won the World Series!

Sometimes I’m nothing if not a nerd who is prone to doing nerdy things. Wednesday night I was at a bar and decided to
play one song from each year of the past decade in order of their release. I was able to come up with the year of the release for many of the songs on my own, however I did have some help from the jukebox. I am glad you asked though as to which 10 songs I played, so here you go:

1. 2000- “Stupify” by Disturbed
2. 2001- “Peaceful World” by John Mellencamp
3. 2002- “Blurry” by Puddle of Mud
4. 2003- “Hey Ya” by Outkast
5. 2004- “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day
6. 2005- “Dance, Dance” by Fallout Boy
7. 2006- “When You Were Young” by the Killers
8. 2007- “What I’ve Done” by Linkin Park
9. 2008- “Gives You Hell” by the All American Rejects
10. 2009- “I Gotta Feelin‘” by the Black Eyed Peas

As for my decade, it did not change as much as many people I knew. After all, I didn’t get married or have any kids. I did however, lose my mom to cancer, had three jobs including my current job and came out of the closet. I also bought a new car in 2001 which I still have. Here is a timeline of major events and crazy shit that happened to me in the past decade, some of which I documented on Xanga:

• January 2000- Mom dies because she is not Y2K compliant.
• March 2000- Drive to Florida and back with my friend Jt. This trip was nuts due to reasons that I can not get into.
• February 2001- I get a new job that actually has benefits. After 3 months I get promoted.
• April 2001- I meet my plutonic soul mate, Danel. I also buy a new car that I’m still in the process of driving into the ground
• May 2001- With less than 500 miles on my car, I fall asleep at the wheel and crash my tire into a curb, destroying the tire and hubcap. Its the first of two battles I would lose with curbs that year.
• July 2001- While playing baseball I trip over a curb while running after a foul ball separating my shoulder. I said “Ouch!” in a rather large voice. Curbs 2, Mike 0.
• February 2003- While at a wake for my uncle, one of my other uncles who is in his mid 70s grabs me by the collar and threatens to kill me. I’m dead serious about this, he was in his 70s and he actually threatened to kill me. When I got up to walk outside, he came yelling after me.
• April 2003- I sit 4th row at a Cubs game during the day and 4th row at a Bulls game in the evening. What’s even more amazing is that they both won!
• October 2003- I’m not the Cub fan who interferes with a foul ball during game six of their playoff series with the Florida Marlins. I’m still heartbroken when they lose the series.
• July 2004- I have a falling out with my best friend Jt after I come home to find him fucking my mother. Normally I wouldn’t care, but she had been dead for over 4 1/2 years. 
• August 2004- I start blogging on Xanga.
• September 2004- I get laid off from my job.
• Fall 2004- I come out of the closet to friends.
• October 2004- I get a new job, the job that I currently have today. Also while in downtown Chicago, I find myself in front of the local ABC studios just as the Democratic candidate for Illinois senate walks by me and dozens others. The guy, Barack something, not only wins his race for senate, but he also later ran for another office. I think he won that office too.
• June 2005- I get banned from a charity event at work after offending the American Cancer Society.
• October 2005- My twin brother turns 30.
• August 2006- I take a trip via train to Denver to see my sister. Ever since then, I have been in love with train travel, however I have only taken one train trip since then.
• August 2007- I get promoted to my current position at work.
• August 2008- In what turned out to be the most eventful month of not only the decade, but probably my life, I take a road trip by myself to Dallas and Tunica, MS. Days after I come back, one of my friends suffers an unthinkable tragedy in his family. The tragedy reconciles my friend Jt and I. There was other shit that happened in that month but in the interest of time, I will leave it out. 
• November 2008- I witness history as I am in Grant Park the night of Barack Obama’s election as president of the United States. I’m not more than a couple of hundred yards from where he makes his victory speech.
• August 2009- I attempt to see 5 baseball games in 5 cities in 5 days by myself. The goal is missed because I was never able to find the fucking Washington Nationals ballpark.

That is just a sampling of what happened in my life the past 10  years. How about yours?

10 years ago on December 31 I had a New Year’s Eve party. Last night on New Year’s Eve I went to a small gathering at a friend’s house. A lot happened in those 10 years, its not just so simple as a couple of parties. The first decade of the new century has come and gone. For me, it couldn’t have ended anymore different than it began. 10 years ago we had a New Year’s Eve party at my house in spite of the fact that my mom was in the hospital at the time dying of cancer. The reason we went on with the party was that my friend Dave was going to propose to his girlfriend at the stroke of midnight and wanted to do it with all of his friends around. Also, although our whole world was crashing down at the time and my life was a living hell, a New Year’s Eve (hereforth to be known as NYE, its easier than typing the whole thing) party represented a sense of normalcy since we had one every year. About 11:45ish, my friend Jt and I snuck into the very room I’m in right now and lit about 5 or 6 candles. Right at midnight, Dave tried dragging Kelli into the room but she wouldn’t go, so I pushed her in and shut the door. Less than a minute later, they were engaged. And the next day, January 2, 2000, my mom was dead.

At 12:12pm on Sunday January 2, 2000 my life was changed forever. Although I was already and adult at 24, I’d like to say that was the moment that I was forced to grow up as I no longer had parents to fall back on. Sure, I had siblings, but its not like I could ever turn to them for any sort of support should I need it. It was a scary, sobering realization. At the time though, I was more relieved that my mom no longer was suffering and we didn’t have to watch her painfully, slowly fade away.

That NYE was almost surreal. For years people talked about what they wanted to be doing as the millennium came to an end. And like everybody else, I wanted to be drunk as hell, celebrating with tons of friends. Hell, the ideal NYE isn’t being on death watch waiting for a loved one to pass. But, that was the precise situation we found ourselves in. Just about all of our friend’s showed up to our party, which meant a lot to us. They knew we could potentially get a phone call at any second but wanted to support us in every way possible. Sure, the party was still kinda crazy, but yet quite a bit tempered from other parties we had thrown. I remember not drinking much, as not only was I too somber to drink, but I also wanted to remain sober enough to drive should we get the call. Thankfully we never did get the call that night. Sometimes I feel bad that we had the party; I feel like it wasn’t the right thing to do. But when I think about being able to share so significantly in my friends special moment, it makes me feel better about the whole thing.

So this NYE I was with a small group of friends at a house. The party was even more tame than the one 10 years ago; there was no loud music, no dancing, and no heavy, crazy drinking by anybody really. Sure, a couple of people got drunk, but nobody got sloppy drunk as there were kids there last night. All that being said, we also weren’t on the verge of losing a loved one.

I wish I had more time to get into how much my life and the world has changed over the course of the last 10 years, but I will save it for another post. Plus, this post is probably going to come off as sad, which is not how I intended it to be; I just wanted to contrast how different the two New Year Eves were for me.